Human actions and conduct have both positive and negative effects on humankind and its environment. This is why ethicists have propounded different theories that are supposed to guide peoples’ conduct in order to distinguish the right from the wrong. Environmental ethics as an aspect of environmental philosophy attempts a justification of the rightness and wrongness of human activities as they affect other non-human members of the society or environment. Despite the efforts of both ethicists and environmentalist, humans have continued to conduct themselves in a manner, most unhealthy to the environmental resources. This is the problematic that informed this research on “Ethics, Environment and Philosophy: Towards Sustainable Development in Africa”. The main objective is to apply selected ethical theories to the philosophical study of environment in order to ascertain their implications for sustainable development in Africa. To achieve this goal, philosophical methods of critical analysis, conceptual clarification and deduction were employed in the examination and exposition of the nature and tenets of the following selected ethical theories: Platonism, Hedonism, Subjectivism, Teleologism and Deontologism. It was discovered upon application that, these theories present both positive and negative implication for environment, philosophy and development. Hence, humans must be positively minded whenever they undertake any action be it from the perspective of Platonists, Hedonists, Subjectivists, Teleologists or Deontologists. If there must be development and sustainability in the environment, then the positive aspects of each of these theories must be harnessed to yield what this paper describes as environmental eclecticism. Keywords: Ethical Theories, Environment, Philosophy, Sustainable Development, Environmental Eclecticism.
The major concern of the problem of personal identity gravitates around the question of whether a person’s identity is located in the mind or in the body. Scholars have developed different theories such as survivalist and physicalist criteria among others in response to this question. In this paper, I engage with the theory of sense-phenomenalism as an aspect of the physicalist criterion of personal identity to show how it might legitimize racism and colour-branding. Sense-phenomenalism is a body-only model of personal identity that holds that an individual’s identity is determined by the physical features sensually perceptible by other humans in the society. I argue that sense-phenomenalism by reposing a person’s identity on his/her bodily traits might foster social discrimination, deepen the dichotomy between the self and the other and enhance the fabrication of justifications for the denial of individual’s rights.
How should African philosophy be done in African Language? In response to this question, I engage Ngugi and Wiredu in their response to this language question in African philosophy. My aim is to appraise and extend their arguments by answering the question of “how” doing African philosophy in African language can be practically achieved. In this regard, I make a case for the creation of an indigenous cultural language that serves as a means of articulating, communicating and disseminating African philosophical ideas. I suggest the need for African scholars to develop a language culture under the auspices of African Language Network (A.L.N.) that will enable them to do philosophy and present it in an African language. I show that African philosophy done in a foreign or colonial language is like dressing Africa in a borrowed rope, and that as long as African scholars continue to overlook this, the lofty goal of restoring the lost glory of Africa, the gains and further progress in African philosophy, rather than being consolidated, may become greatly hampered. Recognizing the diversity of languages in African culture, I present Afrolingualism as the key to achieving this end. Afrolingualism is a conscientious effort by African scholars to contrive a unanimously accepted indigenous language of discourse in philosophy.
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